Dropping Paul Manafort as a cooperating witness ruins his credibility as far as anything he told Mueller and any testimony he may be forced to give with respect to that.  The lies Mueller is alleging are almost certainly an exercise of Mueller’s specialty, the “perjury trap” he is trying to set for President Trump.  It must be assumed the Special Counsel has proof of Manafort’s lies.

Manafort’s defense team has been working with the president’s lawyers since the inception of his plea agreement.  The president’s attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, has admitted as much.  Mueller is trying to prove collusion between Trump and Manafort with respect to the written answers the president submitted last week in response to Mueller’s questions.  If any of Trump’s answers to Mueller’s questions include even one of the same lies as Manafort, it would not only be perjury but the "high crime" the incoming Democratic House majority will use to initiate Articles of Impeachment.

It doesn’t even have to be a big lie -- saying he didn’t know of the Trump Tower meeting between Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskya (who coincidentally, had ties to Fusion GPS, having dined with Glenn Simpson both before and after the meeting), when Mueller has evidence he did, would be enough for Mueller to ruin Trump’s presidency. 

So, denying foreknowledge of a meeting that was not illegal and certainly didn’t rise to the things Hillary and company did with the Steele Dossier may be insignificant, but it still would be a false statement. 

That’s how Mueller got General Michael Flynn, who related a conversation he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that differed from the recordings Mueller had of the meeting.  The meeting would be a legitimate task for an incoming national security advisor and even though interviewing FBI agents didn’t think he was lying and merely misspoke or misremembered, the inconsistency was used to indict him.  Mueller knew what was said because he had recordings of the conversation.  In other words, it was a perjury trap.  That’s not even mentioning that acting Attorney General Sally Yates opened the investigation of Flynn under the pretense that he violated the Logan Act, a 1799 piece of legislation widely believed unconstitutional and never used to prosecute anyone in the more than two-century interregnum. 

And that’s how he got George Papadopoulos as well.  He told investigators that a conversation about Russia with suspected CIA spy Joseph Mifsud, an academic and Russia expert, happened before he was associated with the Trump campaign. 

Papadopoulos, who was named as a foreign policy advisor for the Trump Campaign on March 19, 2016, met with Mifsud on March 15, 2016.  His crime is not telling investigators that on March 10 he already knew of his imminent appointment.  This resulted in a sentence of 14 days in jail for George even though Mueller asked the court for a much longer sentence because Papadopoulos gave him nothing to implicate the president.

It’s what he’s trying to do to Jerome Corsi also, a septuagenarian who couldn’t remember forwarding an email.  Mueller had seized his computers and thus already knew he had forwarded the email.  Apparently, poor memory can result in jail time for Corsi even though there was nothing illegal about the email itself. 

Mueller wanted to flip him, and according to Corsi, lie and say he was the conduit between Assange and Roger Stone (a Trump confidant) for stolen Hillary emails.  In doing so, Mueller was attempting to draw a line from Assange through Corsi to Stone and then to his real target, the president. 

The email is immaterial, it’s the wrong answer about forwarding it that generates the charge and the alleged threat by the Mueller investigation that he would spend the rest of his life in jail if he didn’t say what he was told to say.

Given $30 million, two years, and 17 hungry prosecutors empowered to find anything a target might have ever done in his life and it is likely they will find something.  Flynn would have probably prevailed in court, but Mueller also specializes in “ruination.”  He is said to have threatened to also charge Flynn’s son and wife. 

Mueller has an unlimited budget ($40 million spent so far); Flynn had only his savings.  The same holds true for Papadopoulos and Corsi. 

This is how Mueller has pursued his vocation, railroading people into prison for minor offenses, and his own career advancement.  Apparently destroying people’s lives by charging them with process crimes when he can’t charge them with real crimes is what earns respect in D.C. – because don’t forget that when the now irrelevant Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller (coincidentally, newly fired FBI Director James Comey’s best bud), all we heard was how respected he was and how he had “unblemished integrity.” 

At least Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, actually lied.  He twice told Congress that negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January of 2016 when they ended in June.  Yet, there is nothing illegal about negotiating to build in Moscow.  He lied because he thought it would be better politically if talks ended before Trump attained the nomination.  It is illegal to lie to Congress.  However, it bears noting that John Brennan, James Clapper, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and many other members of the Obama Administration have also lied to Congress and haven’t been indicted by Mueller.  Of course, that’s because he was tasked to only pursue Republicans.  The entire process that resulted in Mueller’s appointment was started by members of the Obama administration and probably personally approved by the former president. 

Yep, that was him, say, “thank you," please.

Mueller’s Greatest Hits:

Whitey Bulger

As Alan Dershowitz said: [“Mueller’s] the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years in order to protect the cover of Whitey Bulger as an FBI informer. Those of us in Boston don't have such a high regard for Mueller because we remember this story. The government had to pay out tens of millions of dollars because Whitey Bulger, a notorious mass murderer, became a government informer against the mafia.” 

That’s really all that need be said about Mueller, then FBI director, and Bulger.

Steven J. Hatfill

He was the man Mueller and trusted “mini-me” James Comey (remember, there may be no coincidences in life, but there are many for Mueller) tried in vain to blame for the Anthrax letters sent to public officials in 2001.  The letters containing powdered anthrax killed five people and hospitalized 17 others.  Despite the lack of evidence, for years Mueller hounded Hatfill, who was a virologist at the Army’s Fort Detrick, Maryland laboratories.  When Hatfill sued and won almost $6 million from the government for Mueller’s abuse of power, Mueller said, “I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation.”  How’s that for integrity?  Ruin a man because the conviction would look good on your résumé and all the liberal world applauds.

“Scooter” Libby

“Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, was accused of outing CIA analyst Valerie Plame -- the eventual charge was perjury (oh, the coincidence).  Forget that the entire world knew she worked for the CIA and she wasn’t an agent and therefore never in danger and that Libby was innocent. 

As the FBI would say with serial killers, Mueller’s “signature” emerges.  First, then-FBI director Mueller’s deputy, James Comey (there’s a coincidence again) forced Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse (it’s always best if targets are defenseless).  Then, Patrick Fitzgerald was named Special Counsel by Comey, which allowed through the “two-hop rule” the FBI to investigate anyone to have ever been in contact with Libby and by extension, anyone to have ever been in contact with them -- in other words, the entire Bush administration. 

It turns out, they knew all along that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the leaker.  Apparently, when you have unblemished integrity, you can do whatever you want.  President Trump pardoned Libby in April.

Ted Stevens

In the runup to his 2008 reelection campaign, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was investigated by Director Mueller’s FBI on bogus suspicions of him misreporting money spent on renovations to his home.  Less than 100 days before the 2008 election, the Justice Department indicted Stevens and he lost the election by less than 2%. 

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan (coincidentally, also the sentencing judge for General Flynn) found that the prosecution was “permeated by the systemic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence, which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens’s defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness.”

Judge Sullivan also said: “In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case.”

Mark Begich, who became the senator from Alaska after beating Stevens in 2008, was the 60^th filibuster-proof vote for Obamacare.

One of the prosecutors in the case committed suicide and the FBI agent who blew the whistle on the injustice was hounded out of the FBI while the agent responsible for the bogus charges was promoted. 

Stevens later died in a plane crash, a ruined man.  But that’s what Mueller does, he ruins people -- if it’s good for his career, that is.

William L. Gensert can be found on Twitter @williamlgensert

He can be reached at gensbill@aol.com and will answer all emails that do not threaten family and friends – given enough time.